COROS Apex Pro Watch Review From a Hiker
The COROS Apex Pro is a multisport GPS watch that sits on top of the COROS line of premium outdoor watches. Anytime you venture into the backcountry on a hike, having an accurate watch can make or break your day. Knowing your altitude, hiking pace, heart rate and direction of travel can literally save your life. COROS is a relative newcomer to the outdoor multisport watch space, but they have quickly taken over market share from staple companies like Garmin and Suunto. I have been using the COROS Apex Pro for five+ months and excited to share my thoughts about this watch as it pertains to hiking in this review.
Background
I have been using the COROS Apex Pro for about 5 months now. The watch was provided to me by COROS but all of my thoughts are unbiased and 100% my own. I have used the watch for all sorts of activities: resort and backcountry snowboarding, running, swimming, biking, and of course hiking. I have taken this watch in waterfalls, on backcountry snowboard trips and up 14ers. It has been tested in every possible way that I could think of from a hiking perspective. I have had the opportunity to compare this watch to my daily one (the Garmin Fenix 6x Sapphire) but also test all of its features on its own as well. Lets jump into the review!
COROS Apex Pro Specs
- $499 Price point
- Black, Green, White Colors
- Titanium + Sapphire Glass
- 1.2 inch display
- Weight 49G – 59G (depending on band) – this makes it the lighest GPS watch in the world at the time of publishing
- Working temperature: 14F – 140F (-10C – 60C)
- Water Resistant: 328ft (100 Meters)
COROS Apex Pro Pros
- Easy to use out of the box, almost no customization needed. COROS seems to understand what data is useful to athletes within each widget so I have found that customization is almost never required for me to use during each activity. Very easy to figure out how to use when customization is needed
- You are able to update widgets within the COROS App instead of computer software which is great.
- Super comfortable, forget it’s there when wearing on long days in the mountains or just in general day to day use.
- I have used the COROS Apex Pro on a number of hikes and the accuracy of the elevation is extremely impressive. With other watches my summit height might be off by a couple of hundred of feet but with this, it’s almost always exactly the correct elevation.
- The COROS Apex Pro battery Life is equal to more expensive watches in a higher price tier.
- The App has some functionality without service/wifi.
- The heart rate monitor is fairly accurate, especially for one that sits on a wrist. I have compared it to my chest monitor on hikes and the results are fairly impressive. No watch or wrist HR reader is going to be as accurate as the chest, but for most hikers this level of accuracy is perfectly adequate.
- When the watch gets low on battery or is about to die – it automatically saves the activity you are using it for before it dies. This is great on long hikes when you don’t want to lose data.
- In general, COROS seems to be constantly adding updates to the watch adding new features, widgets, workouts etc. As a company, they seem to be constantly striving to improve which is great to see.
- COROS has a cool feature where you can see exactly where all of your satellites are during a GPS tracking session. I am not exactly sure what this means for a day to day hiker, but it’s worth mentioning as I have not seen any other company do this before.
- For hikers that spend time at high elevation, COROS Apex Pro has an Oximeter (blood oxygen meter) that will automatically prompt to turn on above 8,250ft or 2,500m. This feature will monitor your blood oxygen levels and tell you whether or not you can keep pushing hard or maybe it’s time to lose some elevation. This feature can be extremely helpful to help avoid AMS or Acute Mountain Sickness.
COROS Apex Pro Cons
- The COROS Apex Pro features a touchscreen LCD but in my opinion, the touchscreen is fairly pointless. It’s only available on a few areas of the watch and its kind of clumsy when using it
- The Apex Pro has a wheel on the right side of it. This is used to navigate screens, think of it as a replacement for a standard up/down button that most watches have. It’s a good idea on paper, but when hiking in gloves it’s extremely hard to use. In summer conditions, this is a non-issue but if you are using the watch in any weather that requires gloves changing screens can be a real pain.
- Although the COROS Apex Pro is their top of the line outdoor watch, it does not have any sort of maps, WiFi, Music or Weather. This is a bit disappointing, especially at the $499 price point. For me, the lack of maps is the biggest downfall. You can load courses/hikes into the watch but they appear as red lines to follow with no topographical features which can be quite useless.
- When using the watch either in a tracking mode or without one, once the COROS Apex Pro gets below 5% battery, the watch essentially becomes useless. Your tracking activity will stop and automatically save and almost all features on the watch become impossible to use, including the backlight. Essentially, whatever is on your home screen is all you get to see. When the battery drops to 2% – the screen just displays a please charge and all data on the watch is lost to the hiker. While I understand why this happens, it really translates to the COROS Apex Pro having a 95% battery capacity.
Summary
Overall I think the COROS Apex Pro is a great watch and the fact that the COROS is constantly upgrading features and improving its products is a really great sign for the future. The accuracy of the altimeter and heart rate monitor is truly impressive and of course the battery life lives up to the reputation COROS is known for.
For me, the watch is perfect for a beginner hiker who doesn’t need the extra features like GPS, WIFI or Music but is more concerned with tracking basic data under a great battery life. However, for the price point, you are essentially paying for a longer battery but not getting the maps, wifi, music etc. that watches in this price point typically have. For my personal hiking and outdoors smartwatch preferences, that is a really big disappointment.
